What's new on Bandcamp?

A roundup of five new digital San Diego releases

If you search for albums tagged "San Diego" on Bandcamp, you'll find some interesting stuff. In this semi-regular column, we sift through recent postings and report on our findings.

By All Means..., United Front: In addition to being tagged with "San Diego," this release is also tagged with "death," "industrial" and "hip-hop," and that might be a little misleading. Well, not the "death" part—this is dark, noisy and basically terrifying power electronics that pretty much seeks to alienate. There's definitely something intriguing about it, but it feels a bit nihilistic for my tastes. Approach with caution.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://unitedfront.bandcamp.com/album/by-all-means"&amp;amp;gt;By All Means... by United Front&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

A.D.S.R. (Attack Decay Sustain Release), Throwback Zack: Yeah, now this is some funky shit! Throwback Zack specializes in Roger and Zapp-style g-funk, heavy on vocoder and '80s-era analog synth sounds. Add in some Prince-style drum machines and a little bit of sexy robot atmosphere and you've got the makings of an instant house party. I could jam to this all day.

Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, Michael Zaneski: This is an interesting release, and an eclectic one, jumping around from Steve Reich-inspired minimalist sounds to Brian Eno-like ambience, some pop instrumentals and the occasional flourish of jazz fusion. It gets dangerously close to new age at times but never grows overly cheesy. Intriguing stuff.

Plagve, Dizma: I was initially expecting this record to be some raw hardcore or metal, perhaps because of the skull, ominous typeface and pentagram on the cover. But it's actually some aggressive, lo-fi hip-hop with intensity to spare. It's also pretty bleak; one of the tracks on the album is called "Seriously... Fuck Dreams," so don't expect any inspirational verse here. That said, it bumps.

Fink Plamingos, Fink Plamingos: The cute spoonerism in Fink Plamingos' name is entirely appropriate for their style of homespun bossa nova. The duo plays jazzy pop that incorporates Brazilian rhythms and some lovely vocal harmonies. They've clearly spent a lot of time with Getz / Gilberto, but that's not at all a bad thing. They know their way around a good melody, and the two tracks here show a lot of promise.